The libertarian congressman says the internet is poised to destroy politics as we know it.

Welch: You have one of the great Twitter feeds out there in Congress, and a week or two ago you tweeted something along the lines of, "Having principles is better than just resorting to 'what-aboutism' all the time." Do you see a lot of what-aboutism happening from your caucus these days when it comes to treating with and reacting to the actions of President Trump?

Amash: Yeah, it's not just from Republicans in Congress, Democrats in Congress do this too, and so does the general public. I think we should be concerned about hypocrisy, where one side is doing something we think it's okay, and then the other side does something and we think it's bad. So there are reasonable concerns about hypocrisy, but that doesn't mean that every time President Trump or Republicans do something we should just say, "Well, the Democrats did the same thing." Because there's no accountability in that.

At some point, people have to decide to make the change themselves. They can't always blame the other side and say, "Well the other side did the same thing." That's how you get these third-world despotic systems, where everyone says, "Well, the other side does it, so we just want our strong man to beat up on them when he's in power." And you see that all around the world, Venezuela and other places, where people's rights are restricted on the basis of, "Our guy is in power now, we should do the same thing that they did to us."

Welch: Do you feel like the Republican Caucus, in particular, has been ... As someone, you're a critic of congressional inaction, and abdicating its responsibility, do you feel like Congress has been doing well in its oversight responsibility of the executive branch under President Trump, not so well, just right ... What's your assessment of that so far?

Amash: Not so well. The number of committee hearings has dropped significantly. When you had the Obama Administration in charge, you had a lot of Republicans making sure that we were investigating every little detail, and now, you don't have that as much. And you certainly have many members who are concerned about what's going on, but you don't have it to the same degree. And that's not to say that in any particular situation the president is necessarily doing something wrong, but we always have to stay on top of things as a congress, that's part of our role, to have oversight. And I think it's good for everyone if we oversee the executive branch and find that nothing was wrong in a particular situation, that's better for everyone. It's better for Republicans, it's better for Democrats, it's better for the country.

Welch: Let's talk a little bit about other ways that Congress abdicates its responsibility. This week, if I'm not mistaken, the authorization for use of military force was in play as part of the Defense Authorization Act, and it kind of vanished overnight. What happened there, what's the status of that?

Amash: Yeah, it was in a Defense Appropriations Bill, and it was seemingly stripped out. So, the idea was to restrict the government from using that old authorization for use of military force on whatever they want today. So, there is a lot of pressure in Congress, on leadership, to do something new, to put a new authorization in place if we want to go after ISIS. If we want to do things in Syria, and Yemen and other places, there should be a new authorization. It doesn't make sense now, so many years later, a decade and a half later, to be using the same authorization as though we are fighting the same war. It's a different group of actors, the people we're fighting today aren't the same people who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks.

So, if we want to continue that fight, let's get a new authorization with the appropriate limitations. And I think that there should always be a time limitation on authorizations, so there should be a requirement that they have to be reauthorized at some point. That doesn't mean you're telling the enemy when the war is gonna end, it just means that Congress has to do its job and say, "If this battle's continuing, we have to have another authorization."

Welch: Was this as close as we've come since 2001 to actually re-upping and requiring the re-uppage of the authorization of use of military force, and what happened to it? What was the process by which in vanished?

Amash: Yeah, it was the closest we've been. Allegedly, it was allowed on there by the chairman of the committee without the blessing of Republican leadership, without the blessing of the White House. And so, I think, whether it was the White House or House leaders, they came in and said, "We're stripping this out. We don't think this is the appropriate venue." And my understanding is they're putting a different provision in there, in the bill, so that we can do a watered down version of what was there from Representative Lee.

Welch: Let's talk more about Congress here. Obviously, Obamacare repeal, replace, or whatever we're calling it, revamp, retooling, and the failure thereof has been on everyone's lips. You were part of both the original House who defeated that bill, and then also the narrow victory of it's replacement in changes of some of the language of it. First, before anything else, the bill that didn't get put to floor, the motion to proceed failed. Mike Lee and others, and Rand Paul blocked that bill. If it had been passed and gotten to you, back, would you have voted yes or no?

Amash: I didn't read it, so-

Welch: reading the bills-

Amash: So I can't tell you what I would have done. There were a lot of things I heard about that were concerning, but I decided that it wasn't in my interest to read it at this point, because I've got a lot of other things on my plate, and I wasn't sure the Senate was gonna get it through anyways. So if I start reading that bill and then it doesn't pass, I've gotta read a whole nother bill.

Welch: Is it your understanding that there would have been, and there would be in the future in case anything passes, which I don't think is particularly likely, that there would be a conference committee, and there would be actual negotiations there, or would it be kind of an up or down, take it or leave it situation?

Amash: It's not clear. House Freedom Caucus members have called for a conference committee, because we suspect that whatever comes out of the Senate will be worse than what came out of the House. So, we think it would be a good idea to have a conference committee, but I'm not 100% sure. I don't know what's going to come out of the Senate at this point, if anything. And whether we have an up or down vote or a conference committee, that's almost for sure gonna be a political decision by leadership, it's not gonna be based on policy.

Welch: And just to display my own parliamentary ignorance here, if the House Freedom Caucus were to say, "We're gonna hold our breath and turn blue in the face unless we get a conference committee," do they have that power?

Amash: I think we can find some procedural tools to block it if we have to. It'll be challenging, but we can talk to the parliamentarian and figure out a way to stop something bad from passing through the House. And as you know, the House version of the bill wasn't very good in itself. That bill had plenty of problems. But, I thought it was marginally better than Obamacare, very marginally. So, if the Senate bill is any worse than the House bill, it's in trouble.

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Parties themselves need to go away; there is little reason for them today. And in the US, there is a good chance that this will happen.

The US is actually lucky in that parties have relatively little power compared to Europe. In Europe, parliamentarians are completely dependent on their party for campaigning, financing, and jobs, and they often have no other careers to fall back on. That means that in Europe, party members have to vote the way the party tells them or else face devastating consequences.

You do bring up a good point about Europe, although their systems are also mostly more friendly towards multiple parties.

That's not actually a good thing. Under the US system, communists, socialists, theocrats, authoritarians, and fascists end up at the fringes of the major parties. In Europe, those groups become splinter parties that often hold the key to forming a governing coalition.

The idea of a 'governing coalition' makes sense only in the context of a Westminster-type system. In the U.S., if the Republicrat oligarchy didn't block the formation of other parties, you would have parties in Congress combining to get a specific bill passed and then recombining for another bill...assuming enough of them could agree to establish a majority, and if they couldn't that would hardly be a bad thing. And then the President has to sign it...

The great thing about a multi-party system a la Switzerland is that it doesn't sustain the absurd fantasy that the fact that one party gets a majority of the vote means that 'the people' have given it a 'mandate' to implement any and every of the crackbrained planks in its platform. Every issue has to be debated on its own; there are none of the everything-including-the-kitchen-sink package deals that our system keeps spewing up.

Every issue has to be debated on its own; there are none of the everything-including-the-kitchen-sink package deals that our system keeps spewing up.

You don't know what you're talking about. In parliamentary systems, the decisions are often not debated at all, they are decided via horse trading between parties in back rooms, and then parliamentarians are forced to vote the way the party tells them to.

A particularly poignant example of this is Germany's 1933 Enabling Act that made Hitler dictator.

Yeah. authoritarians are just fringes right now, which is why we have government thugs violating people's constitutional rights in airports, countless unnecessary wars overseas, unconstitutional mass surveillance, the drug war, and so on.

What is and is not extreme is subjective, and even if something is extreme, that doesn't mean it is bad. In our current system, libertarianism is on the fringe, not authoritarianism.

Let's not pretend that our two-party system is anything other than a poorly-thought-out abomination.

As an immigrant who has experience actual authoritarian systems, let me put it in simple terms: you are an idiot. This crap has been going on in Europe and under parliamentary systems forever, and people don't even notice, let alone complain about it.

Yes, for all its problems, the US political system is head and shoulders above the corrupt, barely democratic systems of Europe, both in its operation and in its outcomes.

As an immigrant who has experience actual authoritarian systems, let me put it in simple terms: you are an idiot.

If your only defense of America's authoritarian policies is 'But at least we're better than these other guys!', then you effectively have nothing useful to say. The fact that X is better than Y does not mean that X is good or above criticism. The fact that X is less authoritarian than Y does not mean that X is not authoritarian. You are the idiot here.

That applies far more to you than it does to me, retard. Using the 'X is better than Y so X is good!' fallacy demonstrates a supreme lack of critical thinking skills on your part. You even admitted that the US has problems, which seems to me to be an admittance that the US has (*gasp*) authoritarian policies. You just proceed to cower behind the 'Well, at least we're not those guys over there!' excuse.

That's not just true for coalitions, it's also true for policy and legislation. Legislation is usually created by "stakeholders", meaning special interests groups. And the set of candidates people can vote for is also decided by parties. And if particular candidates lose their elections, parties often still can get them into parliament via various forms of "wildcard" seats that get assigned proportionally.

Havne't read the transcript yet, but the simplest solution is to elect the three highest vote recipient candidates in each district, and then have them proxy the votes they won instead of one vote per rep.

That ought to break the stranglehold of the two party system immediately. The next step is for all the non-D non-R parties to step up their funding, which would follow naturally, and I do mean naturally; it will be rough for a few election cycles, but the popular $$$ will flow to the popular third parties,

Two parties will probably always be bigger than most just because most people want to back a winner and will perceive any other votes as being thrown away. But it WILL bring other voices into legislatures, and it will force the big parties to be more realistic and not just extreme ranters.

Bullshit, he is a Republican congressman. Not only does it say so on his website, he acts like one. Here, from your own interview

Welch: What if he fires Robert Mueller? Is that a constitutional crisis? You study the Constitution more than most of us sleep or breathe. When does it become a constitutional crisis? Is that the point ... If he pre-pardons somebody close to him, is that a constitutional crisis?

A libertarian would answer: Yes. Especially one who claims to have studied the Constitution and history. Instead, he answered

I don't know the history on pardons, and whether that would be a major problem constitutionally, but the president has a lot of authority to fire people within the executive branch. So, setting aside the constitutional concerns, because I think you can at least make some arguments, I don't know whether they hold water ... Setting aside the constitutional concerns, there are ethical concerns, there are rule of law concerns

Yet another Drumpf cock-holster trying hard not to get primaried. Fuck that guy!

Of course, if all political contributions were outlawed, the two party lock would be broken.
The supposed reason for political contributions is to allow the candidates to have there political opinions heard by "the people".
That can be accomplished by providing a government hosted web site that allows each level of candidate a certain amount of room. Two pages for congress, three for the senate, four for the president, whatever. The same amount for any candidate. No editing allowed, put out what ever the candidate wants. Now all the candidates have their political philosophy available to the voters. Require that the page be populated at least 6 weeks before the election to allow all the pundits to 'clarify' what they really meant, provide analysis, and point out differences with past actions, then vote. Ideally, not allow the page to be populated more than ten weeks before the election!
To deal with those who may be a bit technically challenged, 'request' that all non-broadcast news organizations read the position documents, un-edited, at least three times in the 10 to 6 week period before the election. If they choose not to do so, or make any changes, yank the press passes until the next election, or forever.
The broadcast stations can be required to disseminate the information or loose their license. Local libraries can make the information available to those with vision / hearing difficulties.

Now everyone in the country know what the candidates stand for, and can vote as they wish. All parties have true equal access to the voters.
Now that no candidate needs political contributions, they can be arrested for bribe taking if they get any money from anyone at anytime.
And anyone can take out ads for or against any position, but as commercial advertising, subject to silly things like truthfulness. Free speech and all that jazz.

Obamacare maybe the best tool to facilitate the demise of the 2 parties. One gives us a horrendous bill, the other plays Keystone cops because they are afraid of it. You would hope the ineptness of both parties would bring people around to the idea of less government involvement in health insurance as well as other issues.

Not at all.
The democrats, and those who vote for them do not see Obamacare as a horrendous bill, so they will continue to turn out to vote for more of the same. And will fully support single payer as the fix for any perceived issues.
The republicans, on the other hand, will stay home in droves, because they cannot vote for any democrat, and now cannot vote for any 'proven to be incapable of leading even when in complete control' republican.
So beginning in 2018, until the collapse of democracy in the USA,the statists have secured inevitable victory.

I enjoy that this was a long political discussion with essentially zero political strategy and zero campaign cliches. Amash isn't perfect, but damned if the guy doesn't actually believe in what he votes for.

The idea that all would be well if there were more than two parties, or if there was ranked voting or proportional voting or direct voting or whatever scheme academia insinuates is 'better' somehow exists because a certain ideology needs strife, needs a gullible public to tear apart institutions and leave power vacuums they can slip into.

Look at the two party system in England--the Tories and Labour, in Canada--the Liberal Party and the Conservative party, in Germany--Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, in France, the Socialists and the Republicans--but there are other parties, small ones just like here.

We wind up with two parties in charge because people tend to gravitate towards a center, and because that's where the most people are, that's where the largest parties sit.

And it will always be this way--unless people can be convinced to adopt one of the new voting systems.

Those are designed to deliver one party rule under the guise of still having elections--notice how Republicans got shut out of recent California congressional elections? But the rhetoric sounds so good!